(This one is so bits-and-pieces from so many different moments and memories, and stories I’ve been told, that a part of me thinks I should label it a work of “fiction”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all true, I just took severe liberties in timeframes and locations in the interest of story telling. You were warned; I'm just trying to play fair.)
My desk was something old and wooden, too big really for such a small office but I was happy to be there, I was happy to fight my way through 20 miles in gridlock, the roads covered with others going to their oversized desks and their small offices. I had a tie on, and I had worn one before many times, but only for very specific reasons- funerals, weddings, and high school proms.
One night Exhaust even wore ties to a show in Montevallo, it was my idea and I have no clue why I thought it was such a good idea. It was the middle of summer, and punk rock sweat drenched our white button downs, we laughed at everything and screamed songs all night over the radio. A pack of kids showed up from East Lake and bought our records and asked us to sign them, and I was so high that night, and I was in a tie.
But that was somewhere, something, far far away from 8:00 am on a Monday morning in a tie.
Today was not his worst and he had no idea how bad things were, or were gonna get, or how he shouldn’t have put himself in that position to begin with.
I’d seen the house a thousand times but never stopped, always wanted to. There was an oversized cross and an oversized heart made from mesh and wire, then nailed to the front wood above the gutters. I’d always wanted to go inside too, but they dragged him outside to sweat and aspirate on the porch steps.
Back to other good ideas…
I was given files and a computer. Passwords. Parking Pass. They showed me where the copier was, the fax, the refrigerator. I was introduced to my co-workers, a handful of mostly women who had covered their desks in football paraphernalia, and family pictures, and cartoons of animals. Driving in that morning I popped out the oversized gauges in my ears and put them in my pocket. I pushed my ear lobes together, hoping it would make me look a little less… like me. It didn’t.
The awful feeling was when their office door shut behind them and the isolation came. I stared at the computer, I stared at files, full of names and places, dates… I had no idea what they meant. A friend called and wanted to go surfing, neither one of us knowing how, and I told him I couldn’t. I was working.
But not knowing how to surf and trying to surf, right now, sounded so amazing.
The house with the cross and the heart… and he was pale and tall and skinny, shirtless with white-cold sweat and dirt. His breathing was going in and out, his eyes would bulge and press each time he inhaled. There was an 8 x10 photo nailed to the porch wall of three young boys in red gang colors, hardened adult poses, one had both hands cocked like six guns. The oldest was 15, if a day, whatever that fucking means.
Tammy swiveled around in her chair on week three, day one and opened her right hand, it had five pills, five different colors and sizes. She said it’s called a grab bag. “You don’t know if you're eating ecstasy, or aspirin,” she said “blue jackets, or Viagra. Or AIDS medicine.” I asked her which one she was going to take and she looked at me like I was disease.
“All five, George” And swiveled around in her chair, back to her computer and her share of the files that didn’t make sense to me, no not one bit.
The porch décor had bells and doves, rusted… never flying, or ringing, a cherub angel’s head nailed broken on the door frame, it’s body somewhere else and in pieces, I'm guessing. There was half of a couch on the front porch, a large barrel full of trash bottles and fast food bags, a cactus and the windows were all boarded over. I wanted to go inside so bad, but I had no reason, or right, to do so. And there was a large black woman, sitting on a stool blocking the door. Every time it opened I glanced in taking worthless mental snapshots, but the door, it closed so fast, and I’m not always that smart so I just watched him try to breathe, under a mask, under IVs in his arm, and the white-cold sweat. 21-years old and he was suffocating, and I finally knew how I remembered it all… I was having
Trouble breathing. I was at my desk and I was having trouble breathing. The sun was so bright and that always seems so awful when you're pinned inside, like the world is that simple, and endless, and yours, and you're hiding from making things make sense. I looked at the clock, 9:05am, I looked at the sun light window, I looked at my paycheck and the balance I got from an office job, the insurance and the re-assurance. I took a deep breath, tried to stay put. I reminded myself how “hardcore” I am and that I have the ability to endure it all… hold on.
And I held on. But I was having trouble breathing.
And for an even year I held on. Held on to the idea that this was what I was supposed to do. What a man is supposed to do, an adult American man. They sent me to a conference in Phoenix, I wore a suit and a name tag and tried to not slouch or sleep through lectures and presentations. I saw others there, kids like me, who were trying so hard to be grown-up. They had hidden tattoos, piercings that wouldn’t quite close, and we were all oh-so-miserable.
Another month went by and the greatest thing happened, appropriately first thing in the morning, one morning.
I was fired. And it was so amazing.
Blink your eyes and ten years goes by, they say or something along those lines. And, now, Irondale.
Irondale and the east neighborhoods of Birmingham City are separated by mere discrepancies. Trains cars howl and grind at all hours of the night and day, all while I live in my best friend’s basement. And it is so amazing, so necessary for me right now. I can hear the words of the great dead American writers, their voices echoing in the caves and dark bars and yes, basements too, where they defined a meaning. I am cared for by friends and it’s so so amazing to be alive sometimes, and I feel dumb whenever I envision taking my own life, or ever getting another desk job.
And now I have fire, and bars, and a daughter, it’s okay.
We are all bored, we’re all so bored and sad, and disgusting, it’s okay.
We’re all alone, or not alone, and clueless on what we are supposed to do with the rest of our lives, it’s okay.
And we get frustrated, and run out of ideas, or have so many ideas that none of them make sense, or they are dismissed and misinterpreted. It will be all right.
I can quote Husker Du, it’s okay.
It’s okay to cry your eyes out and run until you run out of breath. And loud loud music, dim lights, a crowd of smiles and band shirts. It’s really good.
A life like this? A life like this has to be earned, nothing is entitled. And things hurt, and there will be isolation, and heartache, and I accept it all, I will carry the demons.
It’s okay.
I promise you it’s okay.
…
Yesterday a friend asked me if I wanted him to teach me to surf, sometime soon, before summer runs its course. The idea reminded me of sunshine blaring through a Pensacola window frame, and shallow breaths, a suit, a tie, a time clock… And this time, this time, I nodded yes and smiled.
“I’m a man with a one track mind. So much to do in one lifetime. Do you hear me people?” – Freddie Mercury
